In a new interview at www.takepart .com, Brown describes how images sent by her father, Milton Brown, prompted her to leave Manhattan and head for the Gulf Coast with a camera crew. Her concerns were partly personal, though she understood the effects of the oil spill would be widespread. “He shrimps off the pier,” Brown tells interviewer Salvatore Cardoni. “I have this vivid picture of my dad putting the weight in his mouth and throwing the net, and he was just so depressed that he would have to give up something he’s been doing his whole life … it really felt like this whole way of life was going to change.”

"The Great Invisible" is Margaret Brown's third feature film. (Photo courtesy of The Cinema Guild)

The film is titled “The Great Invisible.” Browns says it refers to “all the little things we don’t know about our consumption of oil.” SXSW describes it as “At once a fascinating corporate thriller, a heartbreaking human drama and a peek inside the walls of the secretive oil industry.”

Cardoni notes Brown’s decision not to editorialize, telling Brown, “Both in your decision to forgo a narrator and your choice to interview everyone from surviving Transocean crewmen to oilmen at an oil and gas trade show in Houston, you go to great lengths to present all sides.”